


Maglor's Last Journey

by Glorfindel



Category: Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Silmarillion - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Character Death, M/M, Tissues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-13
Updated: 2010-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-11 18:58:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/115838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glorfindel/pseuds/Glorfindel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maglor travels through heavy snow towards Imladris to see Elrond one last time. There is a warg stalking him...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maglor's Last Journey

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by Keiliss.
> 
> Disclaimer: The elves and their surroundings belong to Tolkien. I make no profit and have no intention of making any.

 

 

 

The old elf stumbled along. The snow was falling and his fingers and toes were numb. For thousands of years he had wandered Middle-earth and the lands beyond, always avoiding close contact with anyone. The warg was behind him. Maglor knew that he was weakening, but every sense, every nerve ending, screamed that he would not be animal food after surviving for so many thousands of years on his wits.

 

He knew there was no redemption and no forgiveness for the destruction his family had wrought, and yet felt his end was coming. Considering the long term consequences of those events, millennia ago, Maglor sighed and wondered at what point one’s actions became eternally unforgivable. He knew the oath had distanced those who had sworn it from the Valar, but would it have been forever if nothing else had happened? At what point in the sequence of events were their hearts hardened forever?

 

 _‘There must be somewhere around here that I can find shelter,’_ Maglor sighed. He looked behind; the stalking warg knew it was a matter of time before the old elf fell. The warg could take its time. There was no hurry, and waiting was part of the game.

 

 _‘I will run myself through with my sword before giving myself up to the jaws of a warg,’_ Maglor thought uncertainly. He wondered why his fingers and toes were numb; they had never been affected so before, not in all of his life. _‘Maybe I am dying,’_ he thought, without any real conviction that his long-hoped-for wish would come true.

 

Occasionally, Maglor had seen the bodies of humans who had fallen asleep in the cold and had become frozen. How he envied them their deaths. Elves did not die of the cold, he knew that and so did the Valar. It was a fruitless longing and one that could never come true. “I wish I could die,” he said to no one in particular. “I am so tired.”

 

The forest was left behind and Maglor walked out onto a snow covered plain, the grass tussocks peeping from under the cold white covering. The uneven ground caused Maglor to stumble more than once. _‘What is happening to me?’_ he wondered. _‘I have never been this unsteady.’_ He poked his staff into the ground and walked more slowly.

 

 _‘There must be a settlement near here, otherwise the map does not make sense,’_ Maglor thought as he nervously looked behind to see where the warg might be. _‘He is waiting for me to fall and not get up. I will not give him the satisfaction.’_

 

The map was one that Maglor had liberated from a dead elven warrior during the Battle of the Last Alliance. He had fought under an assumed name, the need to defeat Sauron burning like a brand in his heart. When the Dark Lord had been defeated, the Fëanorian slipped quietly into the obscurity he had always known. No one had questioned where he had gone in the chaotic and overwhelmingly heartbreaking aftermath, nor had they at any of the other battles he had participated in against the one whom he considered the most evil in the land. In times of war it was always easy to join in and fight against the enemy without too many questions being asked, and afterwards it was even easier to leave.

 

The snow covered the small rabbit holes littered throughout the plain, and it was into one of these that Maglor stepped, causing him to fall down onto the ground. He cried out as the bone snapped, and he held the staff over his head with both hands to ward off the attack from the warg which he knew would surely come now he was fallen.

 

Nothing happened.

 

Unseen by Maglor, the warg transformed into the Vala Oromë. “Come, he is to be taunted no more. He is where we want him,” Manwë’s voice said on the slight wind fanning the Vala’s face.

 

Maglor lay breathing hard, expecting, and waiting for the attack. His foot was caught and secured within the hole. Rising to stand would prove impossible. He struggled to sit, keeping in mind that he would need to defend himself against the warg. The nausea filled his throat and he spat onto the virgin snow. Only a little bit more. Nearly there. Heaving breaths and a hopeful look towards the forest. Where had the warg gone?

 

Desperate hands clawed away the snow, perhaps the Valar had given him some time to escape from the fell creature. Firm pressure on his shoulder made Maglor cry out in terror and despair, the beast was behind him.

 

“Are you injured?” a very unwarglike voice asked.

 

Gathering his wits, Maglor quickly replied that he was. “My ankle is snapped.”

 

An elf in a long, hooded, fur coat moved up to the hole and pulled away the frozen earth with his hands. “I am sorry but the earth is too thick to move. I have made the hole a little larger. Grit your teeth.” Then he tugged on Maglor’s leg. Before Maglor passed out with the pain he noticed a stray wisp of blond hair poking from under the hood and thought it strange the things that one takes notice of when living through intense experience.

 

Glorfindel lifted the elf up, wondering who he might be. His face seemed vaguely familiar and he recalled seeing an elf very like him at the Battle of Fornost. _‘I wonder if he is the same elf?’_

 

Maglor had been so near to the border of the realm of Imladris, only a few more feet and he would have walked through the invisible gates. Glorfindel saw them clearly, not the vast, snow-covered expanse of forest and plain that was the illusion Vilya projected to those not welcome in the realm.

 

“I had come to lock the gates to discourage the wolves and wargs from entering the realm, they attacked several of our warriors the day before yesterday,” Glorfindel said to the elf, whom he knew was still unconscious but felt the need to comfort anyway. “They are especially dangerous when they become hungry. I was locking up, which I meant to do yesterday but was caught up in other things, and saw you laying there. It was lucky I did, or else I would not like to think what your fate would have been.”

 

Carefully, Glorfindel laid the unconscious Maglor over Asfaloth’s back and climbed on behind him. He pulled the elf up to a sitting position and moved one of his legs to the other side of the horse so that he was facing him. After opening his coat he placed the elf’s icy hands under his armpits. Their coldness made Glorfindel draw a sharp intake of breath, and he wondered how close to death the elf must be to be so frozen. He pulled Maglor toward him and laid his head on his chest whilst securing the coat around them both.

 

“Let’s go home,” Glorfindel said to Asfaloth.

 

They arrived in the courtyard and Glorfindel told the stable lad to go into the house and fetch some help before taking Asfaloth back to her stall. He handed the unconscious elf to one of the warriors who came to his aid, and then he dismounted, and followed them into the house.

  


The elf lay on a bed in the healing rooms, his wet clothing discarded for fresh warm linens and his hair combed through and dried. On Maglor’s ankle, the wooden structure of a splint was bandaged in place, but that was under the thick fleecy blankets that covered him. Underneath the bed coverings, if anyone had looked, were several stone bottles filled with boiling hot water to keep the bed warm and bring the life back to the frozen limbs. The bed was positioned near to the open fire which warmed the room. The elf’s fingers and toes remained icy cold but there was nothing else the healers could do.

 

Elrond had been told about the elf but had left him in the hands of the healers. There were several injured warriors who had needed his attention during the past two days and he was tired. His healers were perfectly capable of fixing a broken ankle and warming a stray elf who had been on his way to the realm. It was after dark before Elrond saw Maglor.

 

“My Lord,” the healer said to Elrond. “His fingers are as cold as ice and nothing we can do will warm them. His feet are the same. His lips and nail beds remain blue; we cannot encourage the circulation back into them.”

 

Elrond stood looking transfixed. “Leave us,” he said, the grief threatening to show on his face. “Just go.”

 

The healer withdrew and ushered all the staff from the room. Elrond drew up a chair and held the ice cold hand in his. “Maglor,” Elrond said softly. “If I had known that you were the injured traveller I would have come sooner.”

 

Maglor opened his eyes and looked at Elrond. He wondered if the elfling, who was once as his own ion, still remembered him favourably. “I am so cold,” he whispered.

 

A glass of miruvor was held to Maglor’s lips. “Drink this,” Elrond urged. “It will warm you inside.”

 

Maglor sipped the fluid and it did indeed warm his belly, but nowhere else. “Remember you asked me if you would ever see me again when you were an elfling?” Maglor said, his voice barely a whisper.

 

“I remember,” Elrond replied, knowing in his heart that he was saying goodbye.

 

“I came to see you,” Maglor said, every word requiring an effort of will to say out loud. ”I am touched that you remember me, because I never forgot the elfling I sang to and taught to play the harp.”

 

“How could I ever forget you?” Elrond asked, his eyes blinking away the tears. “For so many years you were my ada.”

 

“I have seen your ada sailing in the sky, his star lights our way. Many nights has he guided my path,” Maglor told the peredhel.

 

“Yet he never protected us, and he never sat me on his knee and said that he loved me. He never sang me to sleep or cuddled me; in fact he never considered me or my brother at all. He abandoned us, and then our nana did as well,” Elrond said as he held on tighter to the icy blue-white hand. “I do not know what sort of elf I would have grown up to be, if you had not been there with Maedhros to show us what it was to be loved.”

 

Elrond thought back to his very early life. His ada was never there and his nana became unmoving and distant when left alone, wrapped in her inertia of grief because she had been abandoned yet again. Maglor had once told him that if he and his brothers had not rode on Sirion then Elrond’s family would have remained intact, but Elrond knew the truth, and to him and his twin, Maglor and Maedhros had seemed like liberators from an unhappy and emotionally isolated existence. They had called the brothers, ‘Ada’ by choice and had been truly broken-hearted when left playing by the waterfall. Maglor had explained it was because they were riding out to battle and it was too dangerous for them to ride with him.

 

“One day I will see you again,” Maglor had said to the twins as they sat on his lap. “It looks as though it will not be for a long time yet, but one day...” He stroked away the tears on their cheeks. “We are leaving you with elves who will make sure you stay safe. One of our riders will tell them that you are to be left by the waterfall and they will collect you. Now make sure not to play too near the water, promise me?”

 

“We promise,” the twins had said together.

 

“I told you that I would see you again,” Maglor said, his voice wavering. “I have seen you many times on the field of battle, and even when you and your brother were young I saw you in Lindon.”

 

“Why did you not come and say hello to me?” Elrond asked and kissed the tips of the icy fingers.

 

“You looked so happy, that is why,” Maglor said and felt an overwhelming tiredness consume him.

 

“What is happening to you?” Elrond cried out in alarm. He had seen this look on the faces of dying elves and was not ready to let go.

 

Námo stood beside the dying elf. “It is time for you to come with me, Maglor,” he said. “You have done much to acquit yourself and you are forgiven.”

 

Maglor smiled, relief washing over his face. “The Valar have forgiven me,” he said. “I have to go with them now. I said I would see you again, and my heart sings with joy that I have.”

 

Elrond bit his lip, and his brow furrowed as the tears fell from his eyes. “Don’t leave me again,” he said in an almost whisper.  “I love you,” he said in a futile attempt to persuade Maglor not to go.

 

“I love you too,” Maglor said, and in a last effort of will he brushed the tear from Elrond’s cheek just as he had all those years ago.

 

Elrond watched as the features of the elf relaxed. He talked about the events in his life, and said how he wished Maglor could have shared in them, and as he watched, the fëa slowly slipped away. Maglor said no more, and in the end Elrond kissed his brow and his lips before pulling the sheet over his face.

 

Glorfindel entered the room. “Did you know him?”

 

“Maglor,” Elrond replied. “He came to see me again before he died. Just before he went, he said the Valar had forgiven him.”

 

“Then you will see him again,” Glorfindel said.

 

“There is so much I wanted to know, like where was he all this time?” Elrond said sadly. “I don’t suppose I will ever know now.”

 

“Some things are not meant to be known,” Glorfindel replied. “I can tell you one thing though, his body was worn out and he would have welcomed his release from it. You will see him in Aman. It is not forever, it just feels like it.”

 

Elrond sighed as he stood. He felt Glorfindel’s embrace, the radiant heat of the fire warming them both.  “There is nothing more we can do here. Tomorrow we will give Maglor a warrior’s funeral. I am tired. Let’s go to bed.”

 

The ice was thick over the Bruinen, and over the small lake it fed into. At the other end of the lake was a waterfall, now inactive and still because of the freezing weather. In the middle of the lake stood a byre with the warrior Maglor’s ceremonially dressed body on top, a sword in his hand and a shield by his side.

 

By the edge of the lake, Elrond and Glorfindel stood with the Celebrant of Tulkas. At a respectful distance , a company of warriors stood waiting. After all the words were said, Elrond dipped his arrow in the flaming pitch and fired it towards the bier. It hit, and the dry wood crackled as it caught alight. Next, Glorfindel dipped an arrow in the flaming bowl of pitch and fired. It lodged in the wood at the other end of the bier and soon the flames had taken hold.  One by one the warriors came forward and fired flaming arrows at the bier, all saying farewell to the unknown warrior. The Celebrant of Tulkas said a few more words and then departed whilst the Lord of Imladris and his lover watched the flames grow ever higher.

 

“Remember what I said,” Glorfindel said to Elrond as he took his hand. “One day...”

 

Elrond smiled and nodded. “Yes, one day.”

 

 

 


End file.
